


A Kiss is Just a Kiss

by Gemmiel



Series: Holding On [4]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, bj/hawkeye, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 01:04:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3876556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemmiel/pseuds/Gemmiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye knows he shouldn't have kissed BJ. But will he be able to resist doing it again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kiss is Just a Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> The earlier stories I've posted in this series were written in 2009. But I felt like there was a gap here, so I've added a new story.

One kiss, Hawkeye thinks grimly, was one too many.

It's not that he regrets it. Not exactly. He _wanted_ to kiss BJ, wanted it so badly his body ached and his lips tingled and his heart pounded. He can't remember ever wanting to kiss someone so urgently before.

And it's not that he regrets that it was so chaste. Except he does, really. Part of him wants to know what BJ tastes like, wants to slide his tongue into the younger man's mouth and explore him thoroughly, leisurely, _deeply._ He wants it so much he keeps imagining BJ's taste, the way his tongue would feel, velvety and smooth, against Hawkeye's, the little moans he might make...

But the point, he thinks, dragging himself savagely back on topic, is that he shouldn't have kissed BJ at all.

BJ is-- well, he's pure somehow. Not innocent, not like Radar O'Reilly, who has somehow managed to get through a year of war without understanding the first thing about human reproduction. Hell, Radar probably still believes in Santa Claus. BJ isn't naive or childish, but he's... well, he still glows with the freshness of youth. He has a perfect life back home-- a little house in California, a perfect blonde wife, a beautiful baby girl-- and a golden aura of potential and promise seems to shine around him.

BJ is _normal._

Hawkeye vaguely remembers what it was like to be normal, to be an ordinary guy starting an ordinary career, living a peaceful life in an ordinary American town free of bombs and landmines and bullet-ravaged bodies. But after a year in Korea, he's so very far away from that. BJ isn't. BJ is still untainted by the darkness and the horror and the stench of this place. His smiles still reach his eyes, he exudes a clear and earnest kindness, and he still cries every time he loses a patient. He's _decent,_ in a way Hawkeye's not. Not any more.

BJ, he thinks with more than a touch of bitterness, should have that perfect life, that beautiful blonde wife and giggling baby girl and the pretty little house in paradise. He _deserves_ that life. The last thing he needs is to be dragged down into the dark, terrible reality of this gray world. The absolute last thing he needs is Hawkeye.

It's pitch-black out, and Hawk is sprawled dispiritedly on his cot in the dimness of the Swamp, the same glum thoughts churning over and over again in his mind, when the door opens, and BJ himself walks in.

"Hey, Hawk," he says. His voice is maybe a little too bright, a little too forced. Hawkeye is sure that BJ hasn't forgotten the kiss they shared yesterday in the supply tent, and is probably roiling with guilt over it. He looks tired-- not surprising, considering he's just come off a long shift, but there's something in his eyes that makes Hawkeye suspect it's not just physical exhaustion that's weighing him down.

"Hey," he answers. His voice is grimmer than he means it to be, devoid of its customary cheerful lilt, and he winces. He tries to keep his manic jester's mask on at all times, so as to conceal the darkness within, but he's found himself having a hard time with it today. He tries for a brighter tone. "Post-Op still standing?"

"Was when I left." BJ crosses the Swamp in two long strides and sits on the edge of his bed. His uniform is more rumpled than usual, and it looks like he forgot to run a comb through his brown hair this morning. It's standing on end in a very uncharacteristic way. "But I left Burns in charge, so I wouldn't lay odds on it still being there in the morning."

Hawkeye responds with a toothy grin, because he's supposed to, but he's aware his smile is strained and artificial. He sits up himself, swinging his legs around so that he's facing BJ. They are four feet apart.

Might as well be a thousand miles.

"Care for a drink?" he asks, reaching for the pitcher of gin he poured earlier but couldn't be troubled to actually drink. He affects a snooty English accent. "Tonight we're offering an excellent dry martini, made with the finest British gin available." He pours BJ a glass, and the younger man accepts it, takes a sip, and makes a face.

"You sure this isn't turpentine?"

Hawkeye's grin is a little more sincere this time. "I think it would strip paint pretty easily." He sips the so-called martini, then stares down into the clear liquid. He isn't aware that he's zoned out until BJ's voice jerks him out of a reverie.

"Hawk."

Hawkeye jumps guiltily. "Sorry," he says. "Guess I'm a little tired."

"Is that all that's bothering you?"

Hawk looks across at the other man. Those eyes. So sincere, so gentle, so understanding. He wonders if BJ will still look at the world like that a year from now. Maybe he will. Maybe BJ can hang onto his decency somehow.

Maybe, he thinks gloomily, it isn't Korea that's stripped all his humanity away. Maybe it's just him.

The thought does nothing to cheer him up. He sighs, and doesn't answer.

"Look," BJ says, putting his glass down on the table with a clink and speaking in a rush. "If you're that uncomfortable with me now-- well, I can ask Colonel Potter to reassign me to a new tent if you want."

Hawkeye's head jerks up, and he stares at BJ. "What?"

"I know--" BJ blushes, and begins to stammer. "What happened yesterday-- I know it was-- I don't want to make things awkward-- if you're really that upset with me--"

Hawkeye is aware of his own mouth dropping open, but he can't seem to form words. His mind churns, and slowly he begins to undersrand what his tentmate is driving at. BJ apparently thinks he's disturbed by the kiss they shared. That it was somehow BJ's fault. That he didn't _like_ it.

"No," he says. "I'm not upset, BJ. Not with you, anyway."

"But you've been so-- so distant-- I mean, you haven't talked to me all day. Not really."

"Yeah. I know. I'm just--" He hesitates, trying to figure out how to best articulate his feelings, and at last spits it all out. "I guess I'm feeling guilty, Beej. That's all. I mean, you're married, and a nice guy, and I'm-- well, I'm the farthest thing from nice."

"You're wrong," BJ says at once, firmly. "You're the best thing I've found here, Hawk. The absolute best thing. If I hadn't met you, that first day, I never would've made it this far. I never would've survived."

"Of course you would have. You're stronger than you think, Beej."

"If I'm strong, it's only because I've got you backing me up." BJ stares at him so intensely he can almost feel his gaze. "You are the only thing keeping me sane over here, Hawkeye. I _need_ you, more than I've ever needed anybody. Because this place-- it's so terrible no one could bear it alone. You know?"

"Yeah." Hawkeye nods, unable to look away from those Pacific-blue eyes. "I know. But you're married, Beej, and you love your wife, and--"

"I love my wife," BJ says, sighing, "but she could never understand any of this. She's not a doctor or a soldier, Hawkeye. She has no idea what it's like for us here. I don't think anyone can understand till they've lived through it." He draws in a deep breath. "When I first met you, I thought maybe you were crazy. I mean, genuinely crazy, like you'd cracked under the stress. But now that I've been here a little while, I can see it's just your way of coping. You're not a bad guy, Hawk. I know you think you are, that the last year has destroyed the person you used to be, but the truth is you've just built a hard shell around yourself. When you go home, back to Maine, the shell will crack and fall away."

Hawkeye attempts a joke. "So you're saying I'm a good egg."

BJ doesn't smile. "Deep down," he says, "you're the best man I know, Hawkeye. The best man I've _ever_ known. And so yes, I love my wife. But I admire the hell out of you. You're the only thing getting me through all this, and I don't want to leave the Swamp. But if my presence is making you uncomfortable--"

"Oh, God, no." Hawkeye shakes his head. "I don't want you to go, Beej. I'm fine, I was just a little worried that I'd ruined things between us, wrecked our friendship..."

"Not going to happen," BJ says firmly. "Not ever."

Hawkeye grins at him, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders, and picks up his martini glass. "To friendship," he says.

BJ clinks his glass with Hawkeye's. "To friendship," he echoes.

They drink in companionable silence for a while. At last Hawkeye blurts out, "I still shouldn't have kissed you."

A smile tugs at the corner of BJ's mouth. "I'm actually pretty sure I kissed _you,_ Hawk."

"Um..." Hawkeye replays that moment in his mind. Every instant is burned into his brain with startling clarity. "Maybe it was a sort of mutual thing. But still..."

"It's okay," BJ says gently. "We were both pretty stressed."

"Yeah. Yeah, we were, weren't we?" He relaxes further, because of course BJ is right. The kiss they shared wasn't a big deal, just a momentary reaction brought on by the stress of being fired at for hours. A perfectly ordinary response to the body's production of adrenaline. All this talk about how BJ relies on him, needs him, doesn't mean that their friendship has a sexual edge to it. Of course it doesn't. 

"It's not like you're tempted to kiss me now," BJ says. "Right?"

Hawkeye starts to say _right,_ but he looks at BJ-- tired, rumpled, _beautiful_ BJ-- and the word sticks in his throat. He _does_ want to kiss BJ, damn it. He still wants to know what the other man tastes like, how it will feel when their tongues brush together for the first time, what sort of noises BJ makes deep in his throat when someone touches him. He wants BJ so much that the need coils in his chest, strangling him.

"Actually," he says, "I am tempted. I really am."

BJ's eyes go wide, but then his mouth curves in that soft, gentle smile. "Well," he says, "I don't suppose a kiss means all that much, in the grand scheme of things."

"Right," Hawkeye agrees. "Like the song says, a kiss is just a kiss."

He puts his empty glass on the table and flicks off the light over his bed, plunging the Swamp into darkness. And then he rises to his feet, steps over the four-foot gulf between them, and sits on the edge of BJ's cot. This close, he can smell BJ, can smell the odors of sweat and disinfectant and illness that cling to him, and beneath the hospital odors, the scent of BJ's skin, warm and sweet as a sunwashed meadow.

 _He smells like a summer day,_ he thinks, and then almost laughs at himself. He never thinks of women in such poetic terms, so why is he thinking about BJ that way? 

But it's true. BJ smells like a summer day in Maine somehow, like _home,_ and Hawkeye is irresistibly drawn to him. He reaches out an arm, fumbling a little in the dark, and puts his hand on BJ's shoulder. BJ is moving toward him too, and they lean together... and promptly bump noses. 

They both laugh, breathlessly, and somewhere in the middle of the laugh, they find each other's lips, and the laughter turns into a warm, sweet kiss.

Hawkeye tries to keep it gentle. He really tries, but he's spent too much time today remembering how it felt to kiss BJ, imagining what he wants to do to the other man, how he might taste. Despite his best intentions he finds his hands digging into BJ's hair, his tongue slicking gently across BJ's lips. BJ is awkward and unsure, so tentative about it that Hawkeye would be willing to bet he hasn't had much experience beyond Peg. But Hawkeye runs his tongue along BJ's lips, and BJ slowly relaxes and opens his mouth.

Their tongues brush together, and it's _electric._

Hawkeye remembers, very vaguely, that he wanted to know the sort of noises BJ would make when they kissed. But instead he's the one making noises, moaning softly in the back of his throat, almost whimpering. Despite the fact that the tent flaps are down, he knows that anyone could be listening, and he chokes back the needy sounds desperately. BJ is silent, but his hands tangle tightly in Hawk's hair, and the kiss is almost ferocious in its intensity.

Beneath the gin, BJ tastes like warmth and sunlight and fresh, clear water, and Hawkeye can't pull away. The kiss goes on and on, until he finds himself trembling, his body aching with need. But BJ doesn't want him that way, and there's always the chance someone might walk in on them anyway, so at last, with a massive exertion of willpower, Hawkeye breaks away. He is breathing heavily, and he thinks BJ is panting almost as hard.

 _A kiss is just a kiss,_ he reminds himself, and then almost laughs. Because that was so much more than _just_ a kiss. He forces himself to let go of BJ, and rises to his feet, stumbling back to his cot so that the four-foot gulf yawns between them again. And yet it no longer seems like a great distance. He's almost painfully aware of how close BJ is.

It takes an enormous effort to lie down on his own cot, but he manages it.

"Good night, Beej," he says quietly.

In the darkness, he can't see a thing, but he can hear the breathless note in BJ's voice when he answers.

"Night, Hawk. Sweet dreams."

-The End-


End file.
